This talk by Sir Ken Robinson questions a lot of the givens in current approaches to Education.

I see parallels in Workplace Training, with scheduled courses, standardised material and presentations, every course the same vs Every course is custom, emphasis varies based on questions raised, varying the session to address solving actual problems.

Is the future all custom courses?

I think the future is here now and it raises some issues I will discuss in upcoming posts

This post is for training providers who are moving into SharePoint end user training. It covers how to check email related functions are working and response times are reasonable, once your IT department have completed the setup.

Checking Email Functionality

The Reason

Demonstrating features such as Workflows, Alerts and Tasks all depend on this feature working. It requires some additional steps behind the scenes which may have been missed.

I am recommending this TED talk for two reasons (i) Amanda presents an alternative to conventional business models and (ii) It is just a really effective presentation.

I will be recommend this and the Amy Cuddy TED talk as examples of effective presentations in my PowerPoint courses – any of the TED talks are worth studying to improve presentation technique beyond PowerPoint.

I know every business presentation can’t be like this – but why not just a little bit?

Watch one, Learn something today

Steven

PS last few minutes includes an image that in certain cultures may be NSFW. Its a sad world where there is a need for this disclaimer.

Last Sunday, I found this talk by Sugata Mitra, one aspect of which is the nature of the current western school model and how children can learn. Sugata raises an alternative model for educating children, especially in poor communities, but applicable anywhere. After the video I am going to segue this post into training adults in office IT skills, but to get you thinking please watch and learn from Sugata first. Please also read his TED profile and visit the links to more information there.

I think there is a good community service project in the IT training industry supporting the Hole-in-the-wall project. I will return to that thought in a future post.

While I don’t expect us to be setting up hole in the all learning PCs in the work environment (adults aren’t as adventurous as children – but is there a place for resources the inquiring minds can dive into?) there are strong parallels between the traditional classroom for children and conventional scheduled IT courses for adults in the workforce.

Now I’d if you are a trainer, or training provider I’d like you:

Watch the above talk

Go and sit under a tree and have a think.

I am working on a draft of a post about my take on changes taking place in the training marketplace and the shift to custom/ad hoc/on site training.

Part 1. Using a button to add rows to a table – without writing code
Part 2. Using check-boxes to control the display of hidden fields on the form

A very quickly prepared tutorial to answer some Adobe LiveCycle questions.

Notes:
i) volume levels will vary due to Windows 8/Captivate issues, Please adjust volume to suit
ii) I did this without notes or a script – you will hear the gears turning in my head as I roughly narrate this (the “umm” and “arr” ratio is too high). A scripted narration is always better! In this case it was a false economy not to do one….

Give me 26 minutes and I will show you how process your email efficiently.

In part 1, I demonstrate how to process incoming email effectively and support your time management. You will see how to quickly convert incoming email into Reminders, Appointments, Tasks and Contacts. In part 2, I demonstrate two tools to sort and organise your email (Rules and Quick Steps) and one to find them later! (Search folders).